By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

Growing up gay in the 80s wasn’t much fun with its AIDS and Clause 28 and Andrew Scott’s (Vanya, Duke Of York’s Theatre) screenwriter Adam is struggling with writer’s block, watching old episodes of Top Of The Pops and living alone in a high-rise London tower block which is sparsely populated.

• Read on for reasons including why this is beautiful, haunting and likely to stay with you long after the end credits

Wide-eyed younger neighbour Harry, played by Paul Mescal (A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida), knocks at his door late at night offering whisky and intimacy but is rebuffed as Adam decides instead to revisit his childhood home.

Andrew Haigh’s (Q&A 45 Years) All Of Us Strangers is based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada and finds Adam visiting the suburban house of his parents who died when he was 12 and discovering that they are still living there and are the same age as when they died, similar to him now.

How would a still grieving adult come out to their mother with her 80s attitude of how lonely a life it might be to live as a homosexual?

How would that adult discuss with his father why he never comforted him when he was crying alone in his bedroom after being bullied at school for his femininity?

All Of Us Strangers has a great 80s pop soundtrack which will trigger recognition in anyone who grew up in that decade with Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind, Alison Moyet‘s Is This Love? and The Housemartins’ Build particularly well-used.

Haigh is perhaps best known for debut film Weekend and HBO series Looking which were groundbreakingly queer and we’re reminded of them as Adam and Harry go clubbing in London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern to 90s Blur, take ketamine and become much more intimate.

The source of Adam’s shame is never closer to him than when he is falling down a K-hole and searching for the elusive Harry in pedestrian Tube tunnels littered with 80s-inspired posters warning sex can kill.

Adam’s parents are played beautifully by Claire Foy (Lungs, Old Vic) and Jamie Bell (Rocketman) and who wouldn’t shed a tear as father and son reconciled with the physical similarity between Bell and Mescal perhaps meant to suggest here that family bonds can be as strong as chosen family ones.

It might just be the audience at the Greenwich Picturehouse where we see our films but there was spontonaeous clapping at this film’s close – as there was during Wonka – and much crying throughout.

Scott won our Best Theatre Actor monsta for his triumphant Hamlet in 2017 and we don’t think we’ve ever seen him be quite so moving and affecting onscreen.

All Of Us Strangers pulls off the neat trick of on 1 hand being an everyday story of loneliness and shame redeemed by love and on the other, something beautiful, haunting and likely to stay with you long after the end credits have rolled.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy All Of Us Strangers
• Have you seen Andrew Scott or Paul Mescal before and what did you think of this film?
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